I like how this sounds:
“We have a more nuanced reputation system in place to track the type of character you are,” Sawyer explains. “So beyond just, like, ‘Hey, I’m friends with these dudes and enemies with these dudes,’ we wanted to allow you to make dialogue choices that have attitude and personality to them, and not just throw those out the window. For example, if you keep picking dialogue options that are super hotheaded and aggressive, you start developing an aggressive reputation. That becomes a reputation that is tracked separately.”
“What I personally like about it is, in previous games, when you have these sassy lines or stoic lines or silly lines or whatever, they kind of were just good for the immediate response, and then they went out the window. With our personality and reputation system, it allows you to feel like you are developing a reputation for being that kind of a person in the world.”
Choices will manifest elsewhere, as well. While things like race and sex probably won’t matter quite as much as in, say, Wasteland 2, they’ll still come up. Physical options like bullying with a strength stat or stealing with dexterity, too. Perhaps even more prevalent, however, are quick, hand-drawn vignettes that offer options outside the typical realms of combat and person-to-person dialogue. They largely involve still images, but with written descriptions of activities and choices. No, we’re not talking the sort of pomp and flash one might associate with, say, Dragon Age, but this leaves room for arguably more options and reactivity. Sawyer offers the simple example of interacting with a statue, saying: